Chaos: the Lorenz equation

A third-order non-linear dierential equation, developed by Lorenz to describe certain weather phenomena, can be expressed in the form of three firstorder DEs
dx
dt
dy
dt
dz
dt

= (y x)
= x y xz
= x + xy

in order to solve for particular initial conditions x (0), y (0), and z (0), and
showing the results in the phase-plane, z as a function of x.
Renaming the state variables in MatLab notation y1 , y2 , and y3 , and picking
typical values for , , and , with arbitrary initial conditions
dy1
dt
dy2
dt
dy3
dt
[y1 , y2 , y3 ]t=0

= 10(y2 y1 )
= 28y1 y2 y1 y3
8
y1 + y1 y2
3
= [20, 5, 5]

we solve for [y1 , y2 , y3 ] as functions of t, and plot y3 as a function of y1 .

We program the equations as a function Lorenz3.m
function dydt=Lorenz3(t,y)
dydt=[(10(y(2) y(1))); 28(y(1) y(2) y(1) y(3)); (8y(1)./3 + y(1) y(2))];
and save it in your current directory, usually C:\MATLAB6p5\work. Then
write the script chaos.m
[t,y] = ode23(@Lorenz3,[0 1.5],[20;5;-5]);
x=y(:,1);
z=y(:,3);
plot(z,x)
and run chaos.
A user-friendly version of this is the MatLab program lorenz. If you look
at the end of MatLabs lorenz code, the notation is dierent than above, and

the equations are set up as

y = Ay

0
=
x

x
y

x
z

x

1
y

You can find further information by searching for Lorenz equations on the
internet; for example
http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~worfolk/apps/Lorenz/
carries out a numerical simulation resulting in both y-versus-x and z-versus-x
plots.